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# Systems and superstars II
- URL: https://www.pesec.no/systems-and-superstars-ii/
- Published: 2024-02-01T08:33:21.000Z
- Updated: 2024-02-01T08:33:21.000Z
- Description: Putting things into a perspective.
- Author: Bruno Pešec
- Tags: Innovation, Strategy, Leadership

Expanding on this week's [Bruno Unfiltered](https://www.pesec.no/systems-and-superstars/):

> Improving the average innovation performance across the organisation is the key for the long-term success with innovation. Focus on systems, not superstars.

Let's illustrate the above with numbers.

Imagine a small organisation with ten innovators:

- Nine have average performance (40%).
- One is superstar (80% performance).

Now imagine you have two improvement options at hand:

- Hire another superstar (100% improvement of superstar team).
- Invest in on-the-job training and innovation skills to go from 40% to 50% performance (25% improvement for everybody else).

Assume cost is similar (superstar will need to be on-boarded, training will take time, it works out evenly).

Which is a better option for *systemic innovation performance*?

Hiring additional superstar—a 100% "local" improvement!—yields a 9% innovation performance improvement for the whole system.

Investing in increasing the average proficiency with innovation—a 25% "local" improvement—yields a 20% innovation performance improvement for the whole system.

Twice as much for a quarter of improvement.

How do the numbers look if you have more innovators?

Let's say 30 innovators, with 28 average performers and 2 superstars.

Again, doubling high performers improves the systemic performance by "just" 12%, while improving the average by 25% improves the systemic performance by 22%.

The larger organisation, the bigger the benefit from improving the average.

With 100 innovators, five superstars and 95 average performers, doubling the former improves the organisation's innovation performance by 5% while raising the average by 25% improves the organisation's innovation performance by 23%. That's almost five times the difference.

Now, please don't take the above as a rallying call against high-performers and experts. Heck, [I consider myself one](https://www.pesec.no/the-innovators-attitude-volume-2-issue-6-june-2023/), to allow myself a moment of arrogance.

What I want to illustrate is that organisation's long-term success with innovation hinges on its ability to continuously gets better at innovation by investing in *all* people.